Will Wright

Just got out of bed and I’m shocked to learn that Will Wright (Yes, that will Will Wright.) is leaving Electronic Arts for something called the Stupid Fun Club. Wright started the club with an eye for wacky gameplay experiements, TV pilots and such. The venture will be jointly owned by Wright, EA and an undisclosed third party.

Wow, didn’t see this coming, but it’s an interesting turn of events. From MTV’s report, the departure does sound amicable. It’ll make EA’s Spring Break event in the City a lot more interesting today. EA is showing off more of Spore Galactic Adventures and Spore Hero.

The question many people have posed to me is if this is his doing or if it’s EA imposing crazy things on a previously very reasonable developer. While three of those four things remain a mystery, he recently spoke to Kotaku about the DRM issue, specifically if he or EA was behind it:

It was something I probably should have tuned into more. It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore. They had a plan and the parameters, but now weâ€™re allowing more authentications and working with players to de-authenticate which makes it more in line like an iTunes. I think one of the most valid concerns about it was you could only install it so many times. For most players itâ€™s not an issue, itâ€™s a pretty small percentage, but some people do like wiping their hard disk and installing it 20 times or they want to play it 10 years later.

And the future of DRM?

I think itâ€™s an interim solution to an interim problem. You have games like Battlefield Heroes coming out where the idea is you give away the game and sell upgrades, which works more in the Asian markets where you need to monetize it over the Internet. I think weâ€™re in this uncomfortable spot in going from whatâ€™s primarily a brink and motor shrink-wrapped product to what eventually will become more of an online monetization model.

It’s somewhat reassuring that it wasn’t his idea and that he doesn’t see DRM as a long-term problem solution to a problem, but it does make me wonder what kind of anti-piracy advances Maxis would come up with if the company was still independent.

If you’re still on the fence about Spore, you’re either A) crazy or B) Amish. (Full disclosure: My housemate works for Maxis.) There’s no other way to explain your aversion to this game, but if you’re still hesitant about Will Wright‘s latest title, you can check out the science behind it in a National Geographic documentary at 10 tonight on the National Geographic Channel.

So I was busy most of yesterday. I was in Danville, learning about the economics of plastic instruments and how amazing a certain game is going to be. Afterward, I spent the rest of the day in San Francisco. Sony was holding an event forBuzz! Quiz TV fo the PlayStation 3 and Buzz! Master Quiz for the PlayStation Portable.

Lastly, I traveled to the California Academy of Sciences, which hasn’t even officially opened yet, for the Spore launch party. (There’s a shot of the inside above.) All I have to say is that Will Wright has some amazing connections.

Executive producer Lucy Bradshaw introduced Wright, the aforementioned Spore creator. As of last week, she said there’s 3 million creatures on the Web site. When the game is finally released in North America, I expect that number to jump significantly.More on Wright’s talk, the original how he made Spore

What do you get when you give evolutionary biologists a copy of Spore? Apparently, an audience that is as nitpicky as your hardcore fanboy.

But these esteemed professors don’t talk about anti-aliasing or how amazing the graphics are. According to The New York Times, the biologists look at Spore in a different way.

They like how it is grounded in evolution but don’t like the step-by-step process. In their words, â€œThe mechanism is severely messed up,â€ according to Dr. Richard Prum.

But by all accounts, you should read the article. It broadens a bit in the middle and looks at the cross-pollination between computers and evolutionary theory, but overall, it’s a good read if you want to look at the science behind Spore.

Do you want Spore? I mean do you really, really want it? Would you be willing to sell your first born for the opportunity to play that sweet, sweet god game? Well, I can’t help you out with that, but I can give you a heads up about the opportunity to pre-load Spore.

For those who don’t know, when you buy Spore at the EA Store. The folks over at Redwood City will give you the opportunity to download the game! They’ll let you download 99 percent of it. That 1 percent will remain with them until the release date.

Here’s the rest:

It will only take 30-60 minutes for the install to complete before you can begin conquering galaxies in Spore before anyone else! Please note that you will be charged for the game on the 28th of August and your statements will reflect this.

This is great news for folks with PCs. Unfortunately, those with Macs don’t have that option. Tough luck, Apple people. I guess that’s one thing Macs can’t do.

With Spore, we’re looking way outside the game space, such as TV, movies, etc. We’re basically planting the seeds to spread Spore out to a much wider group of people than would ever play a computer game.

Now, I only spent about 45 minutes playing Spore, I haven’t even tried all the sections of the game yet, but I didn’t notice some of the things crucial to a movie like characters or a plot. How do you adapt something that, by design, has user-created characters, sets, societies, stories and even creatures into a static non-interactive TV show? It would be like trying to adapt Tetris.

Though I do like the whole “personalized gaming” idea he presents at the end:

The computer could observe each player and capture a lot of metrics, which could be used to change the game so that it becomes personalised for him — his game becomes a reflection of who he is internally.

Computer gaming would be like having your own Spielberg, and his whole job in life would be to craft a personal entertainment experience just for you.

How’s about just working on that for your next project instead of this whole movie idea? Please?

First Spore caught flak from religious groups for basically being a game about evolution (which is ironic since it’s about guided evolution, which is essentially intelligent design). Now, proving once again that nobody is ever happy, atheists also hate Spore because it includes religion in the civilization stage.

“I didn’t expect to hit hot buttons on the atheist side as much; I expected it on the religious side,” Wright revealed. “But so far I’ve had no critical feedback at all from anybody who is religious feeling that we were misrepresenting religion or it was bad to represent religion in the game. It was really the atheists.”

Really, focus group atheists? You’re angry that religion is included in a simulation of a civilization? Denying that God exists, the Constitution says you can believe that or anything else for that matter, but denying that religion exists is a little different. Like it or not it’s an influential force in societies and should be included in an accurate simulation.

As far as covers go, Spore’s box art is a little disappointing. (Full disclosure: My housemate works for Maxis.) I have to admit that it’s cute, but it looks a little kiddie for a game with so much science and seriousness behind it.

What I do like is how the cover tells the store behind the game. At the bottom, a primitive looking creature sits, fresh out of the water. As you pan up, numerous different creatures pop up. Some are more advanced than others. But in general, it looks like the most evolved creatures are on the top.

Notice how they’re lined up in the shape of an inverted triangle with everything pointed at the primitive organism. It’s almost implying that the single creature can become any number of these species.

Moving further out, players see other parts of the game from the CIV aspect to the intergalactic phase. There’s a space ship zooming across the top. It’s a smart cover but I was hoping for something a little more refined.

A black box with just the title Spore may have been nice or rather a black box with a picture of a galaxy and the title may have been appropropiate. Or maybe to link those things together, perhaps there could have been a black box with a galaxy that resembled a cell.

Otherwise, it was a decent cover. It doesn’t exactly jump out at me on a shelf, but I suppose with the hype behind this game, it doesn’t really need to do that.